There's no stopping the shopping for Valley Latinos

It's a week till Christmas, and Itzel Garcia is looking to buy a gift for her daughter.

Armed with a gift card, she decides for a dress at Union Gap's Macy's store. The 19-year-old Garcia says that though there's a recession, she still feels she has to buy gifts for her friends and relatives.

"I guess you still need to buy, you still need to shop around," says Garcia. "You feel so bad not to get people stuff. You just manage around and try to go for the sale."

Garcia is just one of the Yakima Valley's countless Latinos who are braving the recession and turning out in droves to local small businesses and national stores like Wal-Mart, Sears, Target and Macy's to do their Christmas shopping.

There's no breakdown of sales for Latinos, but anecdotal evidence suggests that local Latinos -- who make up more than 40 percent of the Valley's population -- account for a growing portion of the holiday season's sales. Jason Ostrer, Macy's store manager, says the Union Mall store did better than last year during the busy day after Thanksgiving, or what merchants call Black Friday.

In fact, the recession seems not to have affected most of the Valley's working-class Latinos, says Luz Bazan Gutierrez of Yakima's Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Quite the contrary, she says: Latino businesses and establishments that cater to that community are thriving.

"What I am seeing is that this has not stopped people from moving forward on their plans for the future. They are buying commercial property; they are opening up new businesses," says Bazan. "So it may be a difficult time economically. But there are two things: People have to eat. And goods and services. So if you are providing goods and services for the Latino population, you are going to do OK."

Buyers and local experts say there are many reasons why local Latinos, especially immigrant Hispanics, are seemingly unaffected by the recession.

"We are mostly agricultural workers," says Manuel Rodriguez, who owns a local nightclub that caters to Hispanics and runs Centro de Servicios Latinos (Latino Service Center) in downtown Yakima. "Nobody is taking our jobs. That's one of the advantages. Things are changing for people who are buying homes and the ones who depend on their jobs."

Rodriguez says that immigrant Latinos tend to "al dia" (day by day): "When we have money, we spend it. For us, things do not change. We are in the same situation."

National chain stores like Wal-Mart and Sears are seeing a barrage of Latino shoppers during the holiday season, but they seem to have targeted one store in particular: Macy's. Both working- and middle-class buyers say they are infatuated with its classy aura, the brand-name clothing, the elegant china, the jewelry and fragrance and cosmetic sections.

Julio Romero, a longtime citizenship teacher from Mexico who works as a consumer credit counselor in the Valley, says some of Macy's chic mystique often reminds immigrant Latinos of traditional upscale stores in Mexico like Dorians, Sanborns, Liverpool and El Palacio de Hierro (this last store was modeled directly after Macy's in New York City when it first built its stores in Mexico City in the late 1880s).

While in their countries of origin, immigrant Latino may not have had access to these stores due to lack of money and class barriers, where social ranks are clearly marked. But in Yakima, their newfound buying power gives them a ticket to places like Sears and Macy's, Romero says.

"We are predisposed to go to these stores to buy what we like. Even if it means a (financial) sacrifice to us, what we believe that will make us happy. I know many Latinos who do not buy second-hand clothing," says Romero, who also does his shopping at Macy's.

The popularity of Macy's and other chain stores in the Latino community may be due to an increase in outreach and advertising, says Bazan Gutierrez, who is a Macy's customer and bought a pair of shoes last week. She recalls when up until the early 1990s, Latinos were not made to feel welcome in Yakima's posh stores. She lauds Macy's for its willingness to hire bilingual associates and for its good customer service, two ingredients she claims are the key to tap into the Latino market.

Macy's has been focusing on the Latino community since 1995, says Janet De Vor, director of Media Relations. She adds that the store's current "Believe" campaign has been translated into Spanish and that well-known Hispanic artists like Carlos Santana, Ana de la Reguera and Carlos Ponce have done national ads for them as well.

Locally, Macy's ads run in Spanish language television, radio and print, including El Sol de Yakima, the Yakima Herald-Republic's sister publication.

Ostrer, the local store manager, says he believes the emphasis on good customer service, in addition to the many associates who are bilingual, have been the reason for Macy's success in the Latino community. The store normally has 110 employees but hired aggressively for the holiday season and now has 240 workers, he says.

"I do think that part of it is the fact we employ Spanish-speaking people," says Ostrer. "The status brands that we carry aren't available at a lot of different stores."

But Macy's is far from being the only store with a successful record among local Latinos. Fiesta Foods opened up last year to great success, and two weeks ago Verizon Wireless of Union Gap hosted three of Mexico's top soap opera superstars who were cheered by 1,500 fans in the cold for an autograph-signing event.

Bazan Gutierrez sees these things as a good sign. She recommends that other local businesses cater to the growing Latino buying power by hiring bilingual workers. She says that she keeps in touch with local Latino-owned businesses and, from what she has heard, the news is good.

"I ask them all. How are things doing? Great. 'Gracias a Dios'

(Thank God) we are doing good."

* Joseph Treviño is editor of El Sol de Yakima.

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